


We Didn't Start The Fire

by AlexSeanchai



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Global Warming, Notfic, Post-Reveal Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Social Justice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22328743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexSeanchai/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: the one where it occurs to someone that Ladybug could solve climate change. and the world begins to demand this.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 45
Kudos: 250





	We Didn't Start The Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Except for a couple of tweaks—the biggest one being "Startrain" aired and therefore a canon-compliant, rather than extrapolated-from-old-concept-art, mechanism for one bit is available to me—this is exactly as I drafted it at the beginning of May 2019. Apparently I'm never going to make it an actual fic. (Oh well.)
> 
> and then silveradept took the outline and made a proper fic out of it! skip straight to Related Works, their version's better 😸

the one where it occurs to someone that Ladybug could solve climate change. and the world begins to demand this.

and Marinette thinks about this. about how the planet got to this point, and why, and who bears blame, and why.

and Ladybug talks with her partner and her team.

and Ladybug calls a press conference. Chat Noir is right by her side—in fact he's sorta kinda technically there as press; he's livestreaming to his official social media.

and Ladybug says yes, it's possible she could. she will not make any promises she may be unable to keep, and she does not know enough to be sure she would not screw things up in the process of trying to fix them. (she's heard about why they brought wolves back to Yellowstone.) meanwhile she would like to know why anyone thinks she is obligated to.

because she has the power to, someone says. (it's Alya Césaire, a plant.) and therefore she has the responsibility.

and Ladybug repeats that, just to be clear. she tells the lightly redacted story of why she became Ladybug to begin with. she expresses full agreement with the principle.

and Ladybug names a bunch of the Forbes Richest list. they have the power to act on this too. therefore, they have the responsibility. a great many of the world's problems would evaporate if Forbes Richest acted to stop them, instead of continuing to profit from them.

the Forbes Richest are also, by and large, adult men whose future careers do not ride on what they do next. not sixteen-year-old girls whose parents think they're at their friend's studying for tomorrow's economics test and occasionally taking breaks to make out with their sweethearts—which is where Ladybug would rather be; her grades are slipping again and she's worried about getting into university.

why is _Ladybug_ the one being told to fix this? why not Forbes Richest?

and she talks about social problems, too, stuff throwing money at won't in itself cure. why queer youth are disproportionately mentally ill, why they're overrepresented among people without stable housing. fair pay. disability accessibility. democratic process and ways it isn't being allowed to work as advertised. yadda. people collectively have the power to solve these.

so no. Ladybug is not going to act to save the planet. not today, and not alone. Forbes Richest will. queer community centers will. artists will. _everyone will_.

in one year, Ladybug will revisit the idea of a magical solution to save the world. but if and only if the world proves to her satisfaction that it wants to be saved, and that the problems leading to its needing saving will not recur. she wants her grandchildren to have a better world than she has, and she will act accordingly. but she will not act to further benefit the powerful few at the expense of the many, and she refuses to be exploited. any questions?

yes, several. these include: someone _not_ a plant asks, could someone else use the Ladybug Miraculous?

Ladybug asks the man's name. repeats his name and his question for the record. and tells him to go fuck Hawkmoth.

Pegasé pops in. Pegasé, Ladybug, and Chat Noir pop out.

and Chat picks the @ChatsMyHero livestream right back up wherever Pegasé drops them, because Ladybug wasn't done. first, though, he embeds the vintage-Stoneheart news clip of Ladybug telling Hawkmoth they know who the bad guy is, right at the top of the blog. followed by the vintage-Heroes'-Day clip of "Ladybug" forcing "Chat Noir" to self-destruct, with a note that this was an akuma-generated illusion, but it's probably accurate to what Chat Noir is capable of doing to a living human.

and Hawkmoth had to put this illusion in the path of news cameras, because if it is as accurate on the previous point as Chat Noir believes, then had the depicted events actually occurred and no one had seen, then _no one would know_. Chat Noir would have vanished without a trace, and so would the boy under his mask, and it would be impossible to figure out what happened, or why, or who might have been involved. (he particularly recommends Forbes Richest watch this clip.)

(and Marinette and Adrien go to Alya's to actually study economics and occasionally make out. punctuated by Alya's spikes of glee over her hit count and over the political bombshells Ladybug just detonated.)

**Author's Note:**

> One detail stolen without shame from "[Chat Noir's Convention Cosplay Crisis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18834514)" by silveradept.
> 
> In the conversation prompting me to post this, Gullwhacker proposes Ladybug's lines include "Sorry, for me to be able to do anything, you'd have to declare all fossil fuel executives to be supervillains."
> 
> Find me on [Dreamwidth](https://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org/) and [Tumblr](https://alexseanchai.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [We Didn't Start The Fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22408924) by [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept)
  * [We Didn't Start The Fire [This Almost Scans If You Squint Remix]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29027415) by [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept)




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